Almost two years after the Criminal Court Number 1 of Arrecife condemned the still head of the Technical Office of Yaiza, Antonio Lorenzo, for a continuing crime of urban planning prevarication, the Provincial Court has confirmed the ruling that imposed on him, one year and 7 months of prison and 9 years and 3 months of disqualification, and that will force him now to leave his post in the City Council.
Along with Lorenzo, in this case were condemned the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, and the former secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, for granting illegal licenses to who was Reyes' party colleague, Pedro de Armas, to build villas in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan. In the case of Reyes and Bartolomé Fuentes already have other convictions behind them and are currently serving one of them in prison, but for Antonio Lorenzo is the first firm and that will make him have to leave the City Council, as it happened in his day with Bartolomé Fuentes.
In the judgment of first instance was imposed on the three defendants the same prison sentence and disqualification, which has now been confirmed by the First Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas. The new ruling, dated September 12, rejects the appeals filed by the three convicts and only partially upholds one of the arguments raised by the defense of Bartolomé Fuentes, not to reduce the sentence but to modify the scope of the disqualification sentence.
Disqualified only as secretary
In the first instance ruling, the magistrate established that the disqualification penalty was for any public office, but the Court has corrected that part in its new ruling, noting that he can only be disqualified for the position from which he committed the crime, ie, the secretary. It is worth remembering that after being removed from that position by a previous conviction, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes began working for the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, where he continued until the Court ordered his imprisonment to serve the sentence of the Yate case.
As with this new final conviction, the Yate penalty was also less than two years in prison, but the Court then refused to suspend the execution of the ruling because of the "unquestionable gravity" of his "conduct", for the rest of the convictions and cases still pending and the risk of committing new crimes, since he had returned to work as an official for another institution.
It is worth remembering that both the Prosecutor's Office and the popular accusation, represented by Urban Transparency, asked at trial for the maximum penalty provided for this crime, which is two years in prison, but the judgment of the Criminal Court Number 1 reduced it to 19 months for undue delays in the processing of this case, which began in 2009 and was paralyzed between September 2013 and 2015 without any action being taken.
De Armas earned 800,000 euros in one day with the sale
The complaint was filed in 2009 by Urban Transparency but the events occurred in 2005, when Reyes authorized the construction of 66 villas in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan, with two different licenses for two plots linked to Pedro de Armas.
In one of the cases, the license was granted directly to him, through Marivista Lanzarote SL. In the other, the beneficiary was the company to which De Armas had just sold the land. As highlighted by another criminal case, De Armas bought and sold that plot on the same day, obtaining a profit of 800,000 euros in the operation, without even "leaving the notary's office". Just after, Reyes granted the illegal license to urbanize that plot.
Both the Criminal Court and the Court consider that Reyes and the two officials were fully aware of the illegality of these licenses, which were granted in a Partial Plan that was extinguished, departing from the law to "satisfy the interests of the promoters, to the detriment of the rest of the citizens of the Island of Lanzarote".
Regarding the allegation of the defenses that "on the date of the events the urban planning regulations were not clear", the judgment recalls that "they were warned from various instances", specifically the Cabildo and the Government of the Canary Islands, which "warned of the illegality". However, "far from attending to such requirements, with the protection of a legal report issued by the lawyer of the promoters (Ignacio Díaz de Aguilar) ignored them, agreeing to continue developing the plan for the benefit of the promoters and in contravention of the applicable legislation".